Microsoft Starts Bug Warnings For Third Parties

Three security advisories were released for rival browsers by Microsoft today, two of which for Chrome and one for Opera. Said bugs were spotted by researchers at Microsoft and brought to the attention of the security teams in charge of Opera and Chrome. Opera patched the bug in October of 2010 while Google fixed the vulnerabilities last September and December.

According to Mike Reavey, the director of the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC), the change is part of an expansion of the vulnerability disclosure policy launched by Microsoft the previous summer. These advisories were the first to be issued by Microsoft for vulnerabilities found in third party software. Other advisories will follow as necessary.

Reavey went on to declare that advisories may at times appear before the responsible vendor has a patch ready for users.

If there’s an attack [ongoing], we’ll release an advisory, most of the time with workarounds and mitigations, but we will continue to coordinate when we do so. In no instance will Microsoft issue an advisory on someone else’s software without first contacting and coordinating work with the other vendor.

Via Computerworld